Mastercard recently announced that it is opening it’s API, which is terrific news.  Payments are important and they should be more open.  However, the announcement is very light on details.

In addition to payments, MasterCard has identified approximately 20 platforms and services that it plans to open up to developers via the portal. These platforms and services provide additional functionality and enhancements to MasterCard’s payment capabilities.

The automated email that comes back from expressing interest to api@mastercard.com isn’t much better.

Thank you for your interest in the MasterCard API.
We will be in touch once we open this up to the development community.
Best regards,
The MasterCard Open API team

A few observations:

1. Payments are the primary functionality so it is good they are included – any API that did not include payments would be a publicity stunt
2. This will create channel conflict for Mastercard.  Right now to process a transactions through mastercard, businesses typical sign up for a credit card processing account with a company like First Data or one of their 800 smaller competitors. If Mastercard is going to allow everyone to go around First Data and the other payment processors, that is very bad news for those payment processors. One way around the channel conflict is to have a different (higher) pricing structure for the new-style payments.
3. If Visa does not come up with a competing product this will be very awkward for them.  If there is an open API for Mastercard and Visa requires a traditional merchant account to handle the same transaction, there are at least a few online services that will use only Mastercard (afterall, most people have both a mastercard and a visa in their wallet).
4. We will have to wait to see what the non-payments platforms and services are but they are an afterthought.  Access to rewards programs?  ATM locations?  That’s underwhelming.